A Sóller real estate agency celebrates selling a house to a resident: "Just the way it should be."

PalmThe tourist overcrowding in Sóller and the arrival of thousands of foreigners year after year has led some of them to decide to buy homes in the town. According to sources from SOS Sóller, there are about twenty real estate agencies in the vicinity of the town square. At the time of writing, the cheapest house listed on the Idealista website costs €255,000, but it only has 52 square meters. It's a third-floor apartment with no elevator. In this context of neighborhood tension due to the problems that Sóller's reputation entails, a local real estate agency has celebrated selling a house to a resident. Real estate agency Tolo Oliver has hung a sign in a window of the residence, which reads: "Sold to people from Sóller, as it should be."

Residents of the municipality interviewed by ARA Baleares, however, qualify this. "There are real estate agencies in the town that have had no problem selling the town to foreigners." "Maybe at some point they were sensitive enough to sell to residents, but money is money, and if a foreigner pays double, they'll sell to them," says one of them.

They buy houses, even if they are not for sale

In Sóller, as in many other towns in the Balearic Islands, the real estate market remains severely strained. Finding homes for less than €300,000 has become a rarity, with few exceptions. Many of the available properties are older houses, often without elevators or recent renovations.

This situation is mainly driven by high demand from both investors and foreigners looking for a second home in the municipality. Buying pressure has reached levels that many residents consider excessive: it is common to find flyers in mailboxes or directly on doors encouraging owners to sell their properties. In some cases, they are even informed that there are already interested buyers, even though the house is not on the market.

This phenomenon is not exclusive to Sóller. It has also been detected in other working-class towns and neighborhoods in Palma, such as Foners, where messages with direct and cash purchase offers are proliferating, often placed in mailboxes. The lack of supply and constant buying pressure continue to drive up prices and make it difficult for residents, who typically have less purchasing power than outsiders, to access housing.

With the arrival of summer, and increasingly so throughout the rest of the year, accessing Sóller is an odyssey. Queues to cross the connecting tunnel are common, especially on weekends. Once in the town, finding parking is equally difficult. Thus, as this newspaper reported, even the spaces reserved for staff and users of the health center are often occupied by rental cars. This situation has generated growing discontent among residents, who denounce overcrowding in tourists and the progressive loss of basic spaces and services. In response, initiatives such as SOS Residents and Welcome to Sollerland, who, through social media, make this reality visible from an ironic and critical perspective.

The Instagram profiles of the latest initiative show recreations made with artificial intelligence that portray summer in the town in the Tramuntana mountains. One of the most shared images is that of a man and a woman surrounded by a crowd, holding a sign that reads: "I was from here." In another, a child appears surrounded by bathers eating ice cream on the beach, while holding a sign with the message: "I used to play here." In this way, the Sollerics aim to denounce the loss of local identity and the impact of excessive tourism on the town's daily life.